


The Haunting of Burning Rescue

by mezzosesu



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Gen, Gueira centric, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26803687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mezzosesu/pseuds/mezzosesu
Summary: When Guiera starts hearing odd sounds around the Burning Rescue firehouse, he has to get to the bottom of it. Galo suggests ghosts, but sometimes reality really isn't that much stranger than fiction.(Written forPromezine, a charity Promare fanzine.)
Relationships: Gueira & Varys Truss
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	The Haunting of Burning Rescue

It’s 3 a.m. and Guiera is wide awake. At first, he isn’t sure why he’s woken up; he’s gotten over the eerie silence that comes with being inside a secure building and his back even got used to the strangely plush sleeping cots in one of the repurposed storage rooms in the Burning Rescue firehouse. He doesn’t have to piss. His stomach is comfortably full from the late dinner of delivery pizza. Nothing is amiss.

He starts to think that maybe he just woke up from some sort of nightmare, but then he hears  _ it.  _

_ scritch scritch scritch THUMP _

His hair stands on end, eyes staring wide at the ceiling above him as he freezes. It’s coming from above him, but as far as he knows, there’s nothing up there but an empty attic. The first time this happened—and it’s been happening sporadically over the last few weeks—he had thought it was a rat. Rats make sense, especially in a building like this where food gets left out. However, the noise was louder than Guiera would expect from a rat, unless it was a huge motherfucker.

Somehow, that’s even more terrifying. 

He spends the rest of the night in an unnerved state, and when the cot underneath him finally shows signs of life, Guiera ducks his head over the edge to look at the human mass buried under a pile of blankets.

“Meis! You’re awake!” 

The blankets shuffle slightly, and a blue head of hair peeks out from the top. “Barely,” Meis mumbles, pulling the blankets down to his chin. “You look like shit. Did you sleep last night?”

“A little bit, until this strange noise woke me up. Have you been hearing anything at night? Weird scratching or loud thumps?”

“All I ever hear is your snoring,” Meis says bluntly, much to Guiera’s ire. 

“That’s not what I meant! And I don’t snore!”

“As much.”

Guiera grits his teeth. Clearly, Meis has no idea what he’s talking about. “Nevermind, you’re useless. I’m going to go ask someone else, because I can’t keep losing sleep like this.”

He climbs down to the floor, offering a light kick to Meis’s legs as he descends. Meis only glares, and Guiera knows that if it were any other time, he’d be dead. He offers a quick thanks to the universe for making Meis a terrible morning person. 

After donning a clean (!) set of clothes and fussing with his hair in the mirror, Guiera leaves the makeshift bedroom and wanders to the lounge area. He isn’t surprised to see Galo and Lio on the couch—Lio not so much on the couch as perched on the couch arm—and Galo showing him some sort of comic book. 

They greet Guiera when he comes into the room and Galo squeezes closer to Lio to make space for him on the couch. 

“Whoa, you look like shit,” Galo exclaims as soon as Guiera sits down. He stares Galo down for a hot second, wondering if he’d get away with manslaughter since he wasn’t technically a citizen of Prometheus. Lio meets his stare with a look that says, ‘forgive Galo, he’s stupid’, and damn if he didn’t respect the boss enough to do whatever he asked. 

So instead of committing murder, Guiera takes a deep breath and exhales. “Yeah, I’m not getting much sleep lately. I keep hearing these strange sounds at night.”

Galo hums. “I wonder if it’s the ghost.”

“The what,” Guiera and Lio say in stereo.

“Ahhh, you wouldn’t know! Lucia told me about it.” Galo dips his head down, prompting Lio and Guiera to move in closer. He lowers his voice to a loud whisper. “She said that one day, she was working late when she got hungry. She went to the kitchen to get a snack but… the fridge door was already open!”

Guiera recoils back in shock and even Lio looks slightly unnerved. Someone clears their throat behind them, and they all turn to see Remi holding a mug and scowling.

“You can’t tell me you believe that. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“But what about the noises?” Guiera asks.

“And the fridge door?!” Galo tacks on. 

Remi rolls his eyes, shoulders dropping as he looks like he’d rather be doing anything other than having this conversation. “This station is old. Of course it’s going to make all sorts of sounds here and there. God, don’t even get me started on the plumbing. And the fridge door? Probably someone being negligent and ignoring basic energy conservation rules. It’s not always something outlandish,” he says with a huff. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go enjoy my morning tea.” 

Galo waits until Remi is out of the room, then he turns back to Guiera. “So anyway, it’s totally ghosts, right?”

Lio puts a hand on Galo’s shoulder and pushes him backwards into the couch so he can look at Guiera. “Not that I actually believe him—”

“Hey!” Galo shouts, affronted.

“—But maybe it’d be worth asking Lucia about it.”

Guiera nods. Leave it to the boss to have good, solid ideas. He gets directed to the garage, where the smell of burnt metal and the low thrum of a cutting saw assault his senses upon entering the space. He calls out to Lucia, who is typing rapidly at a small keyboard. As he walks towards her, Varys surprises him by rolling out from under one of the large mechas, holding a power drill. 

“Oh hey, you look—” Varys starts, but Guiera cuts him off with a raised hand.

“I look like shit, I know. Everyone else has already told me.”

Varys blinks in confusion before sitting up and resting his arms on his knees. “I mean, I was going to say your hair was looking extra spiky today.”

Oh. Guiera covers his mouth with a hand so no one sees the small grin on his face. He  _ did  _ go out of his way to gel his hair to maximum spiky-ness. It feels nice to have someone acknowledge it every now and again. Meis never says anything, and he wouldn’t in a thousand years expect Lio to comment on his style. But whenever someone does, it pretty much makes Guiera’s week. 

After taking a moment to come back to his senses, Guiera plops on the ground and explains his conversation with Galo and Lio earlier. When he’s done, he looks to Lucia for a response. 

“Oh ya, place is totally haunted,” Lucia says, leaning back in her chair. “I’m up at all hours of the night, so I notice a lot. Footsteps that don’t sound human, strange shadows on the walls, the works. Maybe it’s a vengeful spirit that’s stuck here.” She giggles. “Wouldn’t that be a hoot?”

Guiera shivers at the mention of a vengeful spirit. When he was growing up, his mother—bless her soul—always told him to leave supernatural things be. Could he have messed with something to disturb the spirit? Was he being haunted? 

Guiera turns to Varys, hoping to hear a different opinion. “What about you, what do you think?”

Varys shrugs. “I’m a pretty deep sleeper, and when I’m awake I’m usually working with loud machinery. I couldn’t tell you either way.”

“Right, thanks anyway.” Guiera shakily gets to his feet, feeling queasy all of a sudden. Maybe he needed to take a nap. He waves farewell as he leaves, intent on going back to the room and stealing Meis’s bed for a couple hours. Along the way, he runs into Ignis, and figures at this point he might as well ask for shits and giggles. 

“Hey cap, you know anything about ghosts haunting this firehouse?”

Ignis, instead of answering verbally, lowers his head to stare at Guiera over the top of his sunglasses. His eyebrow cocks upward, and his entire demeanor exudes disappointment. 

“Right, thanks anyway.”

________________________________

A few days pass where nothing of note happens. He doesn’t hear the noises and he almost forgets all about the whole haunting thing. Today he’s in a good mood, mostly because he’s looking forward to his leftovers from yesterday's dinner out. Most of the meal hadn’t been anything to write home about, but since Galo had been paying, he’d ordered more than he could eat and had brought the rest home. The ribs were pretty decent though, so after sleeping through breakfast, Guiera is looking forward to heating them up. However—

“Where are my ribs?!” Guiera shouts, running a hand through his hair. It doesn’t make sense; every part is untouched in the container except for the greasy middle, where red sauce outlines the missing ribs. How could someone take the ribs, but leave everything else?! He picks up the box, halfway convinced that somehow the ribs phased through and into the plastic bag containing it, but it is as empty as it should be. He sticks his face further into the fridge, lifting empty pizza boxes and moving half-full juice carts, but his ribs are nowhere to be found.

“I can’t believe this!”

He squeaks when he feels a presence over him. For a fraction of a second he sees pink hair, then his vision is obscured when a hand covers his face and pushes him out of the way. Aina.

“If you didn’t want your food to be eaten, you should’ve put your name on it,” Aina says, reaching over to retrieve something.

Guiera wrenches his face out of Aina’s grip and scoots away from the fridge, defeated. He notes a sandwich in her hand, as well as her name in neat lettering on the side of the wrapping.

“Is nothing sacred?!”

Aina closes the fridge and unwraps her sandwich, looking down at Guiera. “Look, generally we’re all pretty careful about not eating each other’s food, especially if there’s a label. But, without a name, sometimes it disappears.”

“You all are savages,” Guiera comments with disdain. “Eating food that’s not yours just because it doesn’t have a name on it.”

“Mmm.” Aina takes a bite of her sandwich. “Thing is, I don’t think it’s any of us doing it. Probably the ghost.”

Guiera feels his chest tighten. The ghost. The ghost that was apparently totally real. And stealing his leftovers. Fuck. 

Aina gives Guiera a look and opens her mouth as if to offer assistance, but thinks better of it and walks away.

________________________________

Guiera is straight up not having a good time. After the leftovers incident his sleep is basically nonexistent. When he’s not kept up all night by the noises above the ceiling, he’s waking up from nightmares about ghosts and swamp monsters and—surprisingly—Bigfoot stealing sandwiches from his pocket while he bleeds out on the floor. When he rouses he always hears a tiny, chilling voice in his ear that says, ‘Watch out, I’m coming for you!’

After however many nights it’s been, Guiera wakes up from another bad dream. His head throbs with the warning of a headache, so he gets up to get a drink of water. Draping his blanket over him as protection, Guiera descends to the floor and pokes Meis to wake him up. It’s always safer to go places in numbers.

Meis blearily opens one eye, but as soon as he sees Guiera he raises his middle finger and turns over. Well, he’s not going to be any help. Even though Meis can’t see him, Guiera responds in kind before shuffling out the door.

He makes his way slowly through the building, pausing in the hall when he comes upon the doorway to the kitchen. He tells himself there’s no such things as ghosts, whispering it like a mantra as he carefully ducks his blanket-covered head through the clearing. Since it’s usually dark in the building at night, Guiera doesn’t expect to see anything, but there’s a sliver of light coming from the fridge, and in the shadows Guiera can just about discern a strange mass. It’s fucking huge, with a strange gait to it as it shuffles around in the dark.

Guiera’s heartbeat must be at least as loud as a kick drum right now. However, in a body that’s used to jumping into action whenever necessary, instead of freezing, he spots the broom in reach and all he can think is: time to get this ghost fucker. 

With a violent yell, Guiera grabs the newfound weapon and lunges towards the figure, swinging with full force. The mass yelps, falling away from Guiera. It splits, breaking off into a smaller mass that lets out an inhuman sound and scuttles away into the darkness. He can worry about that one later; for now, Guiera lays into the being in front of him, pummeling it with the broom.

“Die, ghost! Stop haunting me and fucking die already!”

“Ow, fuck, wait, cut it out, Guiera!” the mass shouts in an eerily familiar voice. Guiera isn’t going to fall for that though. 

“Don’t you call my name! Hurry and pass!”

The mass crawls towards the wall. Then, the lights flicker on. Guiera squints in the sudden brightness, but as his eyes adjust, he realizes that the figure in front of him is none other than Varys. And he looks pissed.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Varys whispers angrily. “Don’t you know what time it is?!”

“Me?! What about you?! And what the fuck was that?!” he yells, jabbing a finger in the direction of the darkness. 

Varys rubs his head, letting out a curse. “Guess I better show you, follow me.”

He leads Guiera into the dark hallway, cracking open a panel in the wall to reveal a secret staircase. They ascend to the second floor, and when they reach the top Guiera is surprised to see the largest, fluffiest dog he’s ever seen in his life. He immediately goes over to pet it, completely forgetting that just a short while ago he nearly took this poor animal out. 

Varys chuckles. “Isn’t he a cutiepie?”

Guiera learns that apparently the ‘cutiepie’ is from the local pet shelter, and Varys’s latest charge. Lucia knew the entire time, having previously discovered Varys in the middle of the night, but chose to weave a tale of ghosts and spirits to throw everyone off. Guiera’s kind of pissed about it, since it really fucked him up emotionally, but when he looks at the dopey face of this ridiculously adorable dog—his name is Cinnamon, what could be more precious?—all his anger disappears. 

“You’ll keep it a secret too, right?” Varys half begs, half threatens.

“Of course, I’m no snitch!”

Well, except to Lio, but he’s confident in his boss’s ability to play dumb if anyone else asks. 

He spends the rest of the night in the attic with Varys and Cinnamon playing tug of war and getting in some quality furball cuddle time, which eventually turns into sleeping time. Varys rouses him from his slumber early in the morning, and after one final pet, Guiera sneaks downstairs and back into his bed.

Right as he’s falling asleep, Meis’s tired voice cuts through the silence. “You ever find out about your weird sounds?” 

Guiera lets out a loud yawn as he snuggles into his sheets. “Ghosts, apparently.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! 
> 
> Did you enjoy yourself? Consider letting me know with a kudos and/or comment! And if you're curious about my other work or just want to find where else I am on the internet, you can find that [here](https://mezzosesu.carrd.co/) on my Carrd!


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